The Dark Knight

The theme for 2013 seems to be letting go. Letting go of the illusion of control is something that I'm still coming to terms with. I was watching Kevin Hart yesterday and he had a bit about realizing that eventually his ex-wife will have another man around his kids. That's something that I'm just not ready for. It has nothing to do with me trying to control what my ex-wife does. I'm concerned about my daughter.

Every man--at least every decent one--wants to be his child's superhero. You want to be strong, you want to be everywhere at once, and you want to protect them from everything. The truth is that it's impossible. I'm not Superman. Long before the divorce I had to accept that I couldn't protect her from life. And even if I could, I shouldn't. Some things she'll just have to experience in order to learn to stand up on her own.

I stopped trying to be Superman. Not only did I stop hovering over her, I also stopped trying to appear invincible to her. She needs to see a man being vulnerable. She needs to learn that how a man handles his insecurities is far more important than him pretending they don't exist. Instead of being Superman, I relegated myself to being Batman. I don't have any superpowers. It's what I do with ordinary that makes me extraordinary.

But now I'm divorced and this job just got a lot harder. My daughter is now split between two houses, with two totally different parents. Remember, opposites attract. That worked when we were married. We balanced each other out and we compromised in order to present a unified front to our kid. That's just not possible now. No matter what anyone says about being on the same page, there will always be differences.

My house looks like Disneyland. Her house looks like a museum. She plays music and has flowers and stuff up. My house looks EXACTLY like a man lives here. It took four different women coming by to finally convince me to buy one of those little trashcans for my bathroom. And these are just cosmetic differences. Don't get me started on our personalities. So right off the bat I'm trying to figure out to adjust to the new parenting dynamic.

But that's an adjustment I'm trying to make with a person that I know extremely well. If that's difficult, then imagine how hard it's gonna be to add in a person I know absolutely nothing about. I'm sure that when the time comes I'll get to meet the guy, but that's about it. In a perfect world, I'd be given the names and social security numbers of every guy she's halfway interested in from the guy at work to the guy she locked eyes with on the train. Then, I'd take their info, run some background checks, kidnap them and inject them with truth serum to find out if they're pedophiles or not, and then let her know who passes ROUND ONE of my tests.

But something tells me she just won't go for that.

So here Batman sits...wondering. When the time comes will the guy by worthy? This sounds harsh, but I could give a damn what makes my ex-wife happy. The ideal guy to be around my daughter, besides myself, is a 70 year old blind, impotent, and extremely patient old man who enjoys nothing more than telling my daughter a bunch of cool stories about being in the Navy and the importance of financial responsibility. Anyone else is on my terrorist watch list. And trust me...the NSA ain't got nothing on my detective skills.

My daughter was invited to a play date once. Within five minutes I had the woman's name--but more important to me--her husband's name, where he worked, a deed and layout of their house, their 5 year old wedding registry, pictures from the wedding and a list of sports they played in high school and college.

Know your enemy.

I say a lot of this half jokingly, but the truth is that I was eleven the first time someone ever shared with me their secret of being raped by her mom's boyfriend. Back then I didn't know any better and kept her confidence. Since then, I've heard similar stories at least three dozen times, and they haunt me to this day. Coworkers, friends, classmates, ex-girlfriends...so much can happen when love is mistaken for trust. And all it takes is one time to ruin someone's life forever. So, I'll happily accept paranoia over the alternative.

Ex-wife knows this about me, and that's probably why I won't meet her future beau until five minutes before the wedding. What she doesn't know is that within three I'll have a blood and urine sample, and either a right hook or a handshake for the guy. Even in the case of the latter, I'll still be sitting on the roof across the street watching for my daughter's bat signal...

Because I'm Batman.